Fox back, shuffling, sling-armed.
Freshly bleached, and the body over
combed, or toward you.
Equipped with a zipper, equipped with a hood,
an identity, a test for the brittleness of glass.
The molten, tending toward the stature of
a gnome, proves that solitude induces a
gemlike hardening. She asked him to repeat,
“compactification,” like discovering something
already behind glass. Like making yourself
undiscoverable behind a hatch of swishing grasses,
under light like algae,
under the length of a stranger’s life,
over the burn marks from something crazy on
the platform, and the one right type,
from which we all walk home at varying distances.
We received a letter that read:
"Hello from the crater!"
We were taking shifts to care that
the ornaments in ice didn't melt, to
scatter jacks and pat our little hands
all around the feet of budding gourds. We held tight
the day-hitter over any patch of day,
with yellow knuckles. And the letter
went on: "I've just received a letter
from the smallest wave that totters on the shore like a foal.
It read: 'Hello from the little glass!
Hello from someone who knows how to sleep,
to eat and stool and make water,'" ...
